


myosotis sylvatica

by seoafin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: "we're BEsT FRieNDs", Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Keith is kinda a dick, Mutual Pining, Revelations, but 2 years did wonders on his emotional levels, crushes and blushing, everyone's emotionally crippled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-25 06:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seoafin/pseuds/seoafin
Summary: keith comes back on a rainy day





	myosotis sylvatica

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahhahahahaha season 6 wrecked me. also, this is part of my other story (which isn't posted yet) i was so eager to post this once i binged s6 so now i gotta wait for s7 and see?? krolia?? on earth?? coping with texas kogane'sdeath?? fuck me
> 
> anyway Myosotis sylvatica is the official name for the forget-me-not flowers which i thought was appropriate since keith was technically gone, for like, 3 years if u count the 2 he spent with his mom

Keith comes back on a rainy day.

Oh the _irony_.

You like rainy days, love them. An excuse to stay inside and make yourself a cup of warm hot chocolate with five marshmallows and a dollop of whip cream. You like the soothing pitter-patter of the rain hitting the ground, or the sand you suppose, and the cozy atmosphere as you crack open a book. That's what you had been doing, making yourself some hot chocolate, enveloped by a soft blanket, when you heard someone knocking on your door.

You love rainy days.

Keith hates them. They make him antsy, restless, as if there's an ominous clock ticking, and he's running out of time.

Somehow, it must've been divine intervention of some sort that, _of course_ , Keith would come back on a rainy day.

That's why the first thing that comes to mind when you open the door and find Keith fidgeting awkwardly is the thought that after one long year of believing your best friend to be dead, is that you may finally be hallucinating. 

The second thing you notice is the scar on his face, it's faint, but it's a long streak that glides from his cheekbone to his chin. You almost reach out to touch him, but instead you stare, wide eyed and mouth open at the boy--no man, in front of you. He's bigger, you note, taller, shoulders broader, and that god forsaken mullet you always teased him about is longer. You also notice the fact that he holds himself differently, as if he's more sure, more _confident_.

Who is this stranger and what has he done with Keith?

You take a step back the same time Keith takes a step forward. He looks nervous, hesitant. His fingers twitch like he wants to reach out, touch you, but stifles the urge.

_Say something!_

"A hallucination is a perception of a visual image or sound with no external cause that usual arises from a disorder of the nervous system or in response to drugs." You murmur lightly, mentally rechecking everything you've done before this particular moment.

Drugs? No.

Disorder of the nervous system? Maybe this Keith hallucination was an accumulation or a symptom of your anxieties. Or maybe it was reading algorithms and codes until your sight went blurry and your eyes burned. All you knew is that some Keith look-alike stands in front of your door, and you are 99.99% sure that it's all because you are going crazy.

You _had_ been feeling lightheaded that morning, but you popped some Tylenol and ignored it, focusing on your potentially life saving, classified project under Samuel Holt, the man assumed dead with his son, Matthew Holt, and the famed pilot, Takashi Shirogane on the Kerberos mission. Aside from the few glimpses of the hidden plans you had hacked, you weren't quite sure exactly what you were coding, after all, you were just one cog in the machine, one part of a whole. And you weren't so high up in hierarchy to be included in Holt's briefings. 

While you hadn't been as close to Shiro as Keith had been, you still mourned. Everybody had mourned the supposed deaths of two great minds and the prodigy pilot. Not as much as Keith, but still. You were grateful for everything Shiro had done for you both. It was through his recommendation that you had gotten into the garrison as quickly as you had, and the reason why Keith hadn't been kicked out after the first fight.

You can still remember Keith's anger at Shiro's sudden disappearance, including his reckless outbursts in class and at anyone who so much made an eye at either you or him. His erratic behavior reached its peak when it had been coupled with his complications with authority, notably commander Iverson.

You still wince every time you run into the man, and his screwed shut right eye. Never in your wildest dreams would you have thought Keith would _punch_ him.

But alas, one snide comment and Keith had snapped, his fist meeting Iverson's face faster than you could blink.

Shiro's disappearance had sparked two things-- cracks in your friendship, and Keith dropping out of the garrison.

You want to laugh, but it gets caught halfway up your throat. Instead something sounding like a strangled cough comes out. This is an all time low for you-- hallucinating dead friends. What's next? Blackouts? Seizures?

Who would've ever thought that after one, painfully long year, Keith would be in front of your door, in the female section of the dorms, looking as every bit as sheepish and sorry as he did on the day he accidentally beat up Tommy Albano for calling you an orphan in front of class in fifth grade?

But this?

This was too good to be true.

"Hallucination," you breathe out, "you're a hallucination."

Eyebrows momentarily crinkle in confusion. "Wha-?" Straightens in recognition. "I'm not a halluc-"

You slam the door in his face.

You gulp, shaking your head. This is a hallucination. Keith is not here. Keith has not been here in a long time. Keith is most likely dead. You've run the numbers in your head thousands of times, over and over and over and over-

Sleep doesn't come to you easily anymore.

Just numbers. Just your last meeting with Keith, and how it didn't really end on good terms. Replaying it over and over again in your mind, every body movement, every facial expression, praying, _wishing_ , that things had gone differently before he--

Keith's voice is muffled as he calls out your name from behind the door. It sounds impossibly soft. Familiar. Your heart, it _aches_. Tears are stinging at your eyes because Keith's voice, oh god, his _voice,_ while it is a little deeper, it's still the same.

"Uhh, hello?"

In that moment, you decide that you may or may not hate Keith Kogane.

How can he sound so... _nonchalant?_

Slowly gathering yourself, you re-open the door, finding those warm dark eyes guilt-ridden. You open your mouth with the intent of giving this stupid hallucination a piece of your mind, but nothing comes out. You just stare, feeling vulnerable and sad and, and--

unable to name the turbulent feelings currently erupting within you. It feels like you're going through the seven steps of grief all over again, but instead, you're stuck at shock and denial. Keith is alive? Breathing? Not...dead?

There's no harm in listening to what this figment of your imagination has to say...right?

He clears his throat. "First of all, I'm not--I'm not a hallucination."

There's a silence, and it feels like it lasts ages. "I need proof." You croak out. He looks so _real._ You take a shaky breath and rapidly blink away the moisture from your eyes. Exhaustion settles over you, you're tired. You want nothing more than to shut the door again and curl up in a ball on your bed and sleep. Forget the rain, forget the hot chocolate and forget the splayed open copy of A Wrinkle in Time on your couch.

A small, wary smile appears on his face. "You always need proof."

The rest of the statement goes unsaid because that's always how its been. The two of you could always complete each other's thoughts and sentences because that was just how in-tune you were with each other. People always wondered how, the two of you were as different as hot and cold. There were always comments on how you had been the perfect child, quiet and level headed, never throwing so much as a temper tantrum while Keith had been hot headed and rebellious, unable to follow rules and creating more disruptions than any other child.

Keith had been, and probably still was, hot-headed and reckless, yet _loyal_ and _caring_ and bound to leave you either way.

Raising your hand to his face, you gently cradle his face, running your thumb over his scar. Instead of going through him, your hand finds flesh, warm and soft. _Real_. 

You've never been good at processing emotions. What you can do? Compartmentalize. Separate truth and fiction, dead from alive, categorize and organize. You were the logic and analytical mind to Keith's action first think later mindset.  

It's real though. Keith is real. In front of you. Out of the blue. Alive. Not dead.

There are so many emotions running through you at this moment that you can't register them. So you push them down. Ignore them. Focus only on the person in front of you. Maybe later, when you're alone, you'll sit yourself down and fully process everything that's happened to you, but that moment is not now.

"I thought you died."

Keith winces. "It's...complicated."

You scoff. "Complicated huh?"

He sees that look in your eyes, a mixture of distress and detachment, and he'd be lying if he said it didn't affect him. He can almost physically see the walls you erected slowly building back up and he wants to grovel for your forgiveness, do something, _anything_ , to get you to smile at him the way you did on that day he beat up that asshole Todd or whatever back in fifth grade. He didn't mean for you to get hurt, but it was easy, so _easy_ , to get swept up in an intergalactic war, pushing all of his attention and emotional energy towards a cause. Not to mention losing Shiro, joining the Blade of Marmora, and finding his _mother_ \--

His mouth forms the words, _sorry_ , but instead what comes out is--

"I found my mother."

If there had been anything the two of you were good at, it had to be avoiding your feelings, or in better terms, refusing the acknowledge the elephant in the room.

He thinks of Krolia, and how she'd react to knowing there was another person as important as Shiro in his life, a person who had undeniably shaped him just as much as Shiro had. He thinks of when he had visited his father's grave and the umbrella you had shoved into his hands with a, "stop standing in the rain like some angsty teen, you're going to get a cold."

Krolia knows all about Shiro. The two years spent with his mother were enlightening to say in the least. Needless to say, talking to Krolia felt...good. Although he'd never say it, properly bonding with Krolia had felt like the last piece to completing a puzzle, a piece he had been missing his entire life.

They had talked, a lot, mostly about everything. His father, being a pilot, Shiro's guidance--

Not you though.

Some part of him didn't want to talk about you, refused to speak your name. Shiro tried, once, some mission gone sour when he'd been too 'reckless' but it had fallen on deaf ears. It had only served to make him angrier. At that time he didn't need a reminder of what he had left on earth. He didn't need to think of your hurt face and sad eyes that never failed to make him feel guilty, especially when he had a mission to accomplish. Something more real, more tangible, to focus on.

Shiro hadn't tried a second time.

Maybe there was some underlining fear that once he had spoken your name, you wouldn't be just _his_ anymore. He didn't want to share your memory, selfishly, not even with Shiro who already knew you.

He already didn't have a lot. Even his room at the Lions Castle was barren, nothing but his jacket and his dagger. But at least he had your memory, something that was _his_ , nobody else's.

You stare at him, eyes wide, mouth slightly parted at the news. "Oh," you breathe out. "Wow, that's--that's..." licking your chapped lips, you try to pull yourself together. His mother? The same mother who abandoned him? "Great."

His gaze lingers on your lips for longer than he'd like to admit, smothering down the urge to just, _look_. To study the lines of your body and face and recommit it into memory. It may be selfish, but he's missed you. While he's technically been gone for a year, for him, it's been three. Three years without seeing you or hearing you was harder than he'd like to admit. Not to mention the accompanying guilt that would arise whenever he thought of you.

He tries not to notice the fact that there's something...disjointed in the air. It's tense, and nothing like the calm familiarity he's used to with you. It seems normal, _feels_ normal, but it's different. You, in those stupidly cute duck shorts and a simple black tank top, and him, standing outside your door, ready to grovel and beg forgiveness for something dumb he did.

The dynamics have shifted in a way Keith's not sure he likes. 

But now you shift nervously, eyes going from his face to the wall behind him. You swallow, and his eyes goes to the exposed skin of your throat as it bobs. The blood rushes to his ears and it feels like the fact that you're here, in front of him, just an arms length away has slammed into him. The realization that he's been separated from his best friend for three years have finally sunk in. The realization spreads slowly, attacks him unaware, but just as strong.

It feels like he's finally home.

"-me in."

He blinks. "What?"

A ghost of a smile appears on your lips, and he realizes that your smile (as rare as it was) was one of the things he had missed the most while up in space. You step back and tilt your head.

"Come in." _I missed you_. "We have a lot of catching up to do."

**Author's Note:**

> keith kogane is a total mommy's boy.  
> anyway, this is a lot of introspection rather than dialogue. i wanted to try something new. anyway dreamworks pls...give me s7 already
> 
> hmu up on @ seoafin.tumblr.com


End file.
